"This information is harmful, will be screened out!"
“The Green Dam Youth Escort (Green Dam) could lead to a large-scale disaster.”
Recently, there have been many similar negative comments regarding the Chinese government’s new policy that all the computers produced or imported after July 1st must have the web filtering software “Green Dam” installed. The Chinese government said that the Green Dam software was intended to protect youth from unhealthy and harmful material on the Internet. In order to allow users to use the software and its service free for a year, the Chinese government paid 41.70 million RMB to its developer, Jinhui Software.
The public is not reacting quietly to this. I have read many posts about it and would like to reflect on people’s comments with the following points.
Software with a series of flaws
The Green Dam was tested by many experts but I found it hard to find one single positive comment on its quality. One particular post from the Chinese blog 可能吧 (“ke neng ba”, roughly “probably/maybe”) titled “‘Green Dam Youth Protection’ Is A Joke” had a lot of details and screenshots, talking about how awful the experience was.
Just one point to highlight here:
Installation notice said that “This software can filter out harmful information on Internet, but cannot guarantee that all the harmful information will be filtered out, and cannot guarantee that shielded information is not harmful.” – It seems this software cannot do anything.
As a result, the software removes lots of content with “F-words” and pornography but also other content that is not even close to being “harmful”. The page looked incomplete, with lots of stuff on the site missing, such as user’s logo.
The Green Dam made anti-virus software go crazy, once uninstalled there was no longer an alarm.
The Green Dam eats up internet bandwidth, once uninstalled, the speed of opening websites increased.
There is the need to reformat and reset a PC after uninstalling Green Dam.
Hacking risk
Due to a series of software flaws and the fact it will be widely installed on a massive number of PCs, this could allow hackers to steal users’ private information without a way to stop it. Isaac Mao, a blogger and researcher at Harvard University’s Berkman Center, and many other experts talked to BBC News here: China’s computers at hacking risk
Internet control
This youth software is not only designed to control youth but also all people who use a PC with it installed… No wonder people have been saying that the government is just trying to use a “good excuse” to control the internet, to avoid information spreading that they don’t want to people to know about. Green Dam is another GFW. Another software expert proved that users could not tell what kinds of information were removed. Therefore, Government has no right to decide what information were harmful, what information cannot be known by Chinese neitzens.
A waste of tax money
Surprisingly, a software program designed to deal with a social problem brought its developer, Jinghui Software, a huge profit. The government purchased this software for over 40 million RMB to make the first year of service free to users. After a year, how much will consumers have to pay for this service? Many people believe it could be a billion RMB business. Imagine a software installed on millions of PCs that controls what can and cannot be seen, is there any business model that cannot be developed based on this advantage? With the government’s strong support, this company could easily become the largest software company in China. Well, at a minimum, the company doesn’t need to do marketing themselves. The developer denied it has a special relationship with the Chinese government but most people wouldn’t believe this to be the truth.
Computer producers say yes or no to this government policy
There were over 52 million PC that have already installed Green Dam. I would suppose that all the Chinese producers have already received notice from government: Fouder did, Dell did. I guess they just have to say yes to the policy even if they don’t want to in order to keep their businesses running. For foreign producers, the choice is to give up the Chinese market or allow the software installed to their products.
Methods have been developed to cheat this software
We cannot stop the government’s policy, but can we do something else to protect our rights? Don’t underestimate Chinese talent and determination. Solidot published a method of hacking this “Green” filtering system (Chinese), which was found by a pupil. By replacing the kwpwf.dll file with D0970714757783E6CF17B26FB8E2298F, all the passwords automatically change to 112233. No more “unhealthy” websites would be reported to parents.
Currently a search for “hacking green dam” (绿坝破解) on Google has 108,000 results, Baidu has 348,000 results.
Chinese netizens as children
Are Chinese neitzens all children in need of parenting from the government? People hate Green Dam, even before the software has taken effect. I was overwhelmed by this relaction when reading these posts. For this reason, I would not be surprised if there was breaking news saying that the Green Dam was being uninstalled from millions of PCs starting on day one.
more like “GREEN, DAMN!”
It’s more like “GREEN? DAMN!”
Have you considered Green Damn It and biz as usual in China?
Mandatory. Not mandatory. Mandatory for Acer of .tw. Mandatory for Sony, from the land of the Rising Sun. And really mandatory for China’s own, Lenovo. They’ve already loaded Green Damn It. HP and Dell. Not mandatory. They held their water.
So… to bad for numbers one and two. Probably. Not on the payroll. Lenovo? They’ll get compensated at Hodge Podge to keep up the Green Damn It. You, know, to make up for the “penny stock elevator going down” situation. That won’t show up on the Stockholders report, but it will be there.
After that? Dell and HP’s in Shanghai. Lenovo’s in Zhejiang and fill in the province here. And on and on. Has to be.
The catsouttathebag on a regional basis.
Not going back in there. Take care of business as usual and get on with it.